Sweet Redemption
by kalabangsilver
Summary: The team seeks out Harry, after he leaves the service and disappears off their radar. Written as an epilogue for my canon fic, 'Redemption Days', but can stand alone. Set some months post 10.6. AU.
1. Chapter 1

_A/N – Written as an epilogue for 'Redemption Days' but can stand alone. Set post season 10. AU. __Enjoy. __-Silver._

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_Sweet Redemption_

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Erin Watts sat at her desk, watching her team weaving around each other on the Grid. Her office, she reaffirmed the thought quietly, it was her office now and her desk. Still, just a little part of her still thought of it as Harry's. Despite having changed the shelves and tossed the couch for something more modern, it had a feeling about him that she could not quite shake. Maybe it was the ridiculous red wall, she thought to herself, tapping the end of her pen against the desk. She should probably get on to HR about changing the damn thing, but she didn't really have the time. (Or the inclination. It wasn't her bloody job to redecorate the place, after all) And, to be honest, she didn't terribly mind having a constant reminder of Harry Pearce. It was almost comforting, in fact, to think that a part of him was still here, watching over her.

When she had filled in for him on a temporary basis, Erin had not really experienced the true toll of this work. It had only ever been temporary. This was permanent. After the first two months, the reality had started to hit her. There would be no more two weeks off, without distraction, without emergency call-backs from the Grid, without conference calls with the Home Secretary or the DG. It was hard work. The hours were long. The satisfaction of knowing she made a negligible difference was not quite enough to get her through it. Her people were, however. Knowing she was making their job a little bit safer made it worthwhile. Knowing that they would defend her the same way made her proud and want to be there.

Her people.

Section Chief Calum Reid, senior field officer Dimitri Levendis, her two new junior field officers, a fairly prodigal new technical genius who would have put Ian Fleming's Q to shame, a new analyst who did not quite put Ruth to shame, but might be able to rival her, in a few years' time. They were her people, Erin thought, scanning over them. Her employees, colleagues, most of them her friends. Dimitri glanced up and shot her a half smile, as the two junior field officers continued to squabble on front of him. Some of them more then friends, Erin thought, nodding and forcing herself to look down before holding his gaze for too long. Didn't do to get caught staring at your employees.

A second or two later, a knock sounded loudly against her doorway and her technical officer came springing in, holding an envelope aloft.

"Miss Watts?"

She had never really got the hang of letting people use her first name, as Harry had. She didn't think she quite had the confidence yet. She was still getting used to the weight she had, to throw around.

"Yes?" she answered the young woman, with a half-frown at the envelope in her hand. "Tell me that's not something to do with G4S." That security company would be the end of her. The trouble that was brewing, with the Olympics only a few weeks away, had been the stuff of Erin's worst nightmares.

Her technical officer had a reassuring answer for her, however.

"It's not," the girl gave a smile in return, walking over to lay it on the desk. "Nothing official. It's from that private dead-drop you have me check, at Burgess park."

Erin eyed the envelope with suddenly increased interest. The dead-drop was one she kept with Malcolm Wynn-Jones, an ex-spook and a friend of Harry's. Malcolm had contacted her a few days after Harry had handed his credentials and his office over to Erin, officially resigning his commission to the Security Service. What the technical officer had had to say solidified some suspicions Erin had had herself, about his resignation. Apparently, when Malcolm had gone over to Harry's house two days after he left the Service, for a pre-arranged catch-up, he found his friend's house completely devoid of life. Naturally, he had tried to contact Harry through all the usual ways – phone, email, a note through the letter box – but, after he had told the team and they had all grown worried enough, they had finally got permission to break in and see if he was all right. (Erin had, initially, been worried he had done something stupid. He had seemed, for the last few months, to be coping with the loss of Ruth Evershed, but you could never really be sure what a man like Harry was feeling).

Inside his house, they found a note to each one of his children, one addressed to Malcolm and one addressed to Erin herself. In it, Harry's neat handwriting explained on all of them that he was going travelling and he didn't intend to return. The secrets he kept had been destroyed or were in a security deposit box, to be passed on to Calum Reid. The house and its contents were to be passed on to his daughter, to sell or use as she wished. He wished them all goodbye at the end of the letter.

The note had a finality about it which had made Erin's worries deepen. A quick check of his banking practices showed her that Harry had withdrawn all but a few hundred pounds from all of his savings and current accounts over the last six months or so, with no trace of where he had taken it. Worried that this was some elaborate blackmail plot, which had ended with him being kidnapped, she had sent the team to run him down but they could not find hide nor hair of him. No kidnapper would be so efficient, Erin decided, after a long and agonising month trailing Harry's movements in her spare time (and fighting a resurgence of Islamic extremists the other twenty-three hours of the day). Harry had done this himself. He had spent months planning his exit.

The timing still threw her, however. Why had he left when he did, with only a few weeks to go before the Diamond Jubilee, with only a few months to go before the Olympics? Erin had made it clear to him that she was capable of handling the team, but Harry was a man built on priorities. If he had wanted to leave the Service to travel and find peace in himself, then he would have waited and done so after the summer.

Out of character movements aroused suspicion, in her spook mind. The Section Head knew that Harry leaving the Service _technically_ meant leaving the watchful eye of its many technical officers and satellites – she knew that Harry had every right to up sticks and vanish – but the reality was somewhat different than the theory. And she was worried. He could be in some sort of trouble. He could be under duress, or being blackmailed. And Erin felt as if she owed him some loyalty and concern. She had felt she owed him since that day Sasha escaped her, at the bunker, and attacked Ruth. She owed Harry. And she always paid her debts. So, she had set Malcolm to the task of trying to find him, wherever he was hidden.

If ever there was a spook equipped to find Harry, she figured, it was Malcolm Wynn-Jones. He was a top-notch technical officer. He had experience and skills in following financial paper trails. And he was an old dog, like Harry. The pair of them buried their bones in the back garden. They would know best where to look for one another. She had enlisted his help nearly three months ago, however, and Malcolm had reported back to her with nothing ever since. A few false leads, but nothing to warrant a package of this size. This was something important.

Bidding her technical officer thank you, then, Erin seized the package and, after waiting until the girl's footsteps had faded away down the hall, ripped it open to examine the contents. Her heart squirmed in her chest as she read the small explanatory note Malcolm had taped to the front.

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	2. Chapter 2

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Calum and Dimitri responded immediately as their boss called them to the briefing room. There was a look in her eyes which spoke of something urgent and urgent in their business meant the possibility of imminent death. They hurried then, to the table, taking up their seats across from her and looking to the file she had laid before them. Upon closer inspection, Calum realised that it was not an official file after all – just a whopping great manila envelope. Lifting his eyes back to Erin's, he raised an eyebrow.

"What's this?"

She flipped over the flap and slid out a thick wad of paper. The top few sheets, as Calum reached out and shuffled through them, seemed to be medical records of some sort. The rest was maps and an address. And a CCTV shot of Harry Pearce, standing in the stairwell of some building on the phone.

"Harry?" Calum asked. "I thought we'd stopped looking." And wisely so, in his opinion. They should be giving the poor man some space. He had lost a lover and a colleague in one day. He had discovered that a woman he had believed to be an innocent and the mother of his son was actually an agent for a foreign intelligence agency and had been using him, all along. That he had come back to work at all had surprised Calum. That he had lasted as long as he did, before leaving again, surprised him more. He had left at an odd time but, from the glimpses of his ex-boss he gleaned, while the pair of them had worked a case together apart from the others, Calum quite understood his cutting all contact and disappearing. This team and this place were a constant reminder of what he had lost.

Reaching out, the Section Chief picked up the front sheet of the medical records.

"Harry... Smith." He looked back up at Erin. "Not the most inventive of spies, is he?"

"What were you hoping for?" Erin growled, a touch aggressively in Calum's opinion. "Bond?"

"Would have been nice. His middle name is James, after all."

"Who found this?" Dimitri asked, frowning down at the CCTV shots.

"Malcolm Wynn-Jones," she began, "he was a technical officer in-,"

"-I think we all know who Malcolm Wynn-Jones is," Calum scoffed slightly.

Dimitri's expression remained mildly confused, however.

"He's a technical genius!" Calum exclaimed. "Designed half of the kit we use in the field and he was Harry's longest-serving officer. Retired just a year before you joined."

"I've had Malcolm looking for Harry," Erin explained, sitting down finally at the table. She looked worried. "Running up paper trails, trying to trace where he put all of his money when he skipped town. For the last few months, he's come up with nothing, but he left this at his dead-drop this morning."

Dimitri held up the sheet. "It says that his medical records were accessed from an NHS database by a IP within the hospital's Clinical Genetics department, two days ago." He frowned. "What's Clinical Genetics, when its at home?"

"Genetic diseases and stuff, I suppose," Calum muttered, feeling suddenly very uneasy.

Harry sick.

It didn't seem right. He had always been so controlled and steadfast and in command. It had seemed, several times that Calum had seen him in action, as if he couldn't be touched by the same mortality which so often grabbed hold of his colleagues. He had seemed invincible. To think of him ill – some terrible disease which would eat away at his body and/or his mind – it didn't feel right. In fact, Calum felt more unsettled by it than he would have expected. It seemed his hero worship stage wasn't over after all...

"Harry's sick?" Dimitri asked, sounding a little unsure himself.

"We think so," Erin replied, in a small voice.

It did rather explain things, thought Calum; Harry's sudden leaving, with only a few months to go before the Olympics and everything that summer. Floating around the world, spending your life savings, was probably a justified response to how the world had treated his ex-boss this last year – but it had never seemed very 'Harry'. To have left because of sickness, to avoid them having to get involved and the indignity of it all, now _that_ sounded like Harry.

Another uncomfortable twinge passed through Calum's gut. He was not a naturally empathetic person, but he felt for his ex-boss right now.

Poor bloke.

A long silence passed in the briefing room. Dimitri kept checking and rechecking the IP address and the hospital address, as if he might look back and they be suddenly different. Each time they weren't, he looked a little desperately up at Erin. Erin just watched them both, looking contemplative. If Calum hadn't known her for so long, he would have thought it an entirely un-emotional response, but he had known her for so long and he knew this was almost akin to tears, for Erin Watts. She wasn't a cold fish. Just a rather contained one. It was one of the attributes that made her a good spook. And a good boss.

"I'm going down there tonight," she eventually spoke. "I'm meeting Malcolm and we're going to try and talk to him."

There was a long pause, then Dimitri quietly asked, "should we really intrude?" He gave a little wince. "I mean, I know you have the best intentions but he did cut all ties with us, when he left. Harry's a very private person. Have you considered that he might genuinely not want us there?"

Calum looked quickly over at his colleague, frowning. "Clinical genetics means they're screening him for something bad, D. I don't know about you, but I'm willing to risk a bit of a bollocking to make sure he's okay." He turned back to Erin. "This could be why he left so suddenly, couldn't it? I mean, if he was diagnosed with something and he didn't want it to affect his work..."

"It could be," Erin nodded.

Another long pause sounded.

Should they intrude? Calum supposed there was an argument to be said, for leaving him be – he knew that, just a few minutes ago, not knowing about this Clinical Genetics business, he would have been the first to voice it – but, whatever Harry thought he needed, no man was an island. If their ex-boss had been trying to protect them and their work from the effects of his illness, that was fine and well, but the game had changed now that they knew. Now, it was sort of their responsibility to make sure he was okay. They were a team, after all. They had lived and lost together and, whatever anyone said about those in their profession, Calum believed that that was necessary. It was like his grandfather had used to say, about his time in army. The only thing that kept you going, sometimes, was knowing that your buddy in the foxhole next to you had your back – and needed you to stick around, to have his. They were all in this game together. If Harry was in trouble, if Harry was sick or hurt, then they had to have his back.

"I'm going with Erin," he stated, calmly.

The two looked at Dimitri.

The younger officer sighed, then shrugged. "I'm in."

A man of few words, as always.

"Good." Calum gave him a little smile, despite it all. He had known Dimitri would come. They were a team. "It'll be good to see Harry again. Its been weeks since someone's shouted at me, or told me I'm impulsive, irritating and impertinent."

Dimitri regarded him for half a second, then muttered something that sounded a bit like, "now that I find hard to believe."

The three of them got up and prepared to head out.

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	3. Chapter 3

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Malcolm Wynn-Jones sat in the driver's seat of a dark green Mercedes E-class, staring out the window at the gathering dark. The hospital lights glowed the night sky orange all around it. The largest Infirmary in the region, he thought, running back through the research he had done when he had found out that Harry was being treated there. From the patient feedback, it was one of the best in England, with excellent Clinical Genetics, Neurology, Maternity and Outpatient facilities. It was a well-rounded place, with a few notable doctors and surgeons. Harry could not be in better hands, in the public sector of this country. Still, Malcolm could not help but worry. Harry was one of the few friends he had left, from the old days. He was the only one he had left, from the old team.

There had been so many lost, he thought, watching a bus pull up on front of the hospital and unload a couple of passengers. So many lost. Three junior field officers in his first year, no one in his second, but their Section Chief and an analyst in his third. Lucas (John Bateman, Malcolm supposed he should think of him, now) had been captured and left to the Russians in his fourth year. After that, there was the sweet desk girl, Helen. Then Tom had lost hold on everything and been decommissioned. After Tom, there had been worried young Zoe, crying as she walked away from the man Malcolm could tell she was still a little in love with. Then Danny himself. Then Colin... Colin. And Ruth, lost to exile like Zoe. After her, it all began to blur together in a horrid mess of emotions. Zaf. Adam. Hopeful young Ben. Hopeful young Jo. Connie, to betrayal and then to death. Ros. Lucas (John Bateman, Malcolm reminded himself. He was called John Bateman). The young man who had replaced Malcolm, Tariq, who he had barely known. And then Ruth, again.

Ruth...

Malcolm sighed.

Poor Harry. Poor, poor Harry. To have lost her, after all of it. They had missed out on so much because of their cautions natures. Their story was one of taking one step forwards and two steps back. The old technical officer had hoped so much that what had happened with Albany would have brought them closer together. For a few weeks, he had thought they might be, too. When he had coffee with Ruth, just before Harry's tribunal, she had seemed optimistic. Malcolm hadn't wanted to frighten her by talking about them directly, but when he had asked how Harry was doing she seemed comfortable enough talking on the subject. She had even smiled as she stared down into her cup of coffee, those pretty eyes of hers lighting as she told Malcolm that they had met and talked through everything. She had loved him, even without her saying it, it had been painfully obvious. Malcolm just hoped, despite them not quite making it, Harry knew that in the end.

Beside him, the growl of an engine startled him back to the moment and away from his thoughts.

Carefully, a long sedan slipped into place beside his – not a MI5 pool car, he was glad to note – with Erin Watts behind the wheel. A young man he recognised as Dimitri Levendis sat in the passenger seat and another man was sleeping soundly, cheek pressed against the window in the back. Harry's people. Though he did not really know them, Malcolm greeted them with a smile as he turned his own engine off and stepped outside, wrapping his coat around him despite the almost warmth of the summer night. They were bonded by a shared friend and a shared secret. Spooks. All of them spooks. Shadowy creatures, made of secrets.

"Mr Wynn-Jones," Erin greeted him first, walking around and extending her hand as her colleagues clambered out the car behind her, Dimitri shoving the other man awake, the other man yawning widely. "This is senior field officer, Dimitri Levendis,"

"Yes," Malcolm nodded as he shook Dimitri's hand. "We met when I came in to report to Harry, once." To tell him Lucas had come to him, asking for Albany. It had been a tense day. He supposed today they were meeting under no less tense circumstances.

"Good to see you well, sir," the polite young man nodded to him, straight backed and sharply dressed. Malcolm wondered if he was ex-military.

The second man stepped forwards as Dimitri leant back again.

"Calum Reid," he supplied his name, offering his hand. "D Section Chief Officer." He had a much more lackadaisical appearance than his fellow officers. He was probably the sort who would have grated on Malcolm, at work. He was also the sort of person that Harry would have liked because he rubbed people up the wrong way.

Malcolm shook his hand.

"Right," he nodded to the lot of them as they fell into a semi-line, watching him. Though Erin Watts was the ranking officer, he was the eldest spook there and, there was a strange feeling responsibility that came with that. He was Harry's oldest friend. He had been the one to find him. He had brought them in on this. The others were looking to him for instruction. "I've had a look," he began, with as much sureness as he could muster, "but I can't find anything else on the system about Harry Smith being treated – nor anyone with his medical history as him being treated," he added, as Calum Reid opened his mouth with a vaguely smart-mouthed expression in his eyes. "He must have taken his details off the network again as soon as they were checked through."

Section Chief Reid closed his mouth again.

"How will we know where he is then?" Erin asked, frowning.

"I've scrubbed through their CCTV and found him several times over the past two days, in the fourth floor corridor, just outside the stairwell. That's where he seems to take phone calls, so I assume he's in one of the wards around there. They don't have any blueprints that I can find but once we get inside, it shouldn't be too difficult to find him. The stairwell he's in is out on that wing," he pointed to a modern conversion. "It's not so very big. I'm sure we'll find him, between us."

The assorted spooks murmured noises in agreement.

Malcolm stood for a moment. Then, remembering he was playing boss tonight, gave a sharp nod. "Right. Let's have at it, then."

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	4. Chapter 4

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Calum Reid and Dimitri Levendis took the lower floor, carrying a bunch of flowers. The flowers had been Calum's idea, though his Dimitri reluctantly agreed that it was a good idea, in retrospect. It at least gave them the facade of pretending to be there to visit someone. Inching along the corridors, they took surreptitious glances into each of the wards as they passed, supplied false names to nurses and basically made a nuisance of themselves all the way through the closed outpatient clinics and through neurology. Dimitri tried hard to concentrate on faces and not what on earth he would say to Harry, once they came face to face.

The last thing they had ever said to one another was a rather awkward conversation about his relationship with Erin, in the hallway as he had escorted Harry from Thames House for the last time. With that awkward air he always had, when discussing something personal, Harry had offered the advice that Dimitri come clean about what it was between the two of the early on. Stumbling over the fact that everybody apparently knew that he and Erin were anything more than colleagues at all, Dimitri had mumbled out something about not even knowing, himself, what they were. Harry had given him a small smile and told him to 'just start talking'. With a little frown and a very distant, sad look in his eyes, he had continued. 'Once you start talking, you start moving forwards."

They had reached the door of the great building at this point and Harry and Dimitri had faced each other across the way, hands in pockets. Had Harry been the sort to accept such a thing, Dimitri would have reached out and hugged him. But Harry was Harry and he was far too ingrained in hierarchy to test the subject. So, straightening up, he gave Harry a curt nod.

"It's been an honour, sir."

A slight smile had hovered over Harry's face – the first real smile Dimitri had seen in months. Since Ruth, actually. (Poor, sweet, kind Ruth).

"Likewise," he had told him, softly.

Then he had turned and left and Dimitri had gone back to work.

He had, incidentally, had a talk with Erin. Harry was right, it sort of moved them forwards. The awkward 'I know you like me and I like you, too, but I don't know how much,' tension had left the air between them now. He had taken her out for a drink one night. He had babysat for Rosie on numerous occasions. On one or two, he had slept over afterwards. They were strange, almost-casual encounters, but both of them lay stroking each other's hair and skin for far too long afterwards to keep up the impression of casual under too much scrutiny. Maybe they should talk again, Dimitri thought, as Calum complained at his side, about his feet and the lateness of the hour, and the fluorescent hospital lighting that was making the bags under his eyes look darker than normal. Maybe he should ask her to date him.

His cheeks flushed at the thought and he decided to just wait and see if Harry had any wise words to offer, on the matter. That was, he thought, if they ever found Harry (who he very, very, very much hoped was all right and not as sick as Calum had implied he might be. It truly wasn't fair after all he had been through... Losing Ruth outside that bunker, seeing her revived by the paramedics in the helicopter, sitting by her bed for seven whole days, clinging to hope as she lay in a coma, only to lose her all over again. It was so awful. He didn't deserve more pain).

"Okay," the ex-SBS officer sighed, turning back to Calum and forcing his mind onto the task at hand. "That's wards seven and eight covered and all of the private rooms in-between. I suggest we head back to the stairwell and re-group with the others, unless we receive confirmation."

"You make this sound like a bloody operation."

Dimitri eyed him.

Calum was a wonderful field officer, a more than decent analyst and an incredibly efficient – if rather pompous – Section Chief. He was good with people, in small doses. In large doses, he ruffled feathers and raised hackles at the wrong people. It wasn't that he didn't realise who outranked him and that their opinion was the one that counted. It was simply that he didn't care. If he thought he knew better, if he thought his idea/way/method of doing something was more efficient then he would do it. He reminded Dimitri of Harry, sometimes. Just sometimes.

"Ugh," Calum admitted, wrinkling his nose. "You're probably right. Let's proceed with Malcolm's plan. We'll sweep the corridors back down to the stairwell, then call the others to see if they've had any luck." He gave a wide yawn. "He'll be around here somewhere."

"We'll just have to look until we find him," Dimitri agreed.

"Easy for you to say," the Section Chief said, yawn stretching on until he ended it, with a violent shake of his head. "My feet are killing me. While you were sitting cushty behind your desk, all day, I was running after bomb-toting villains." He glanced sideways after he spoke, at his younger colleague.

It was a purposefully inflammatory statement because, on most days, that situation was reversed. As the point officer on most cases, Calum rarely pulled field duty on days such as today had been – long, arduous and shit weather. Dimitri took the comment with the good humour with which it was intended, however, simply lifting an eyebrow. As irritating as his superior officer could be, they got on most of the time and the comment had been designed to make him laugh. It was a gesture of truce, after having rubbed him up the wrong way all the way down from London.

"Let's go," he nodded, towards the way they had come.

The pair of them headed back, Calum still grumbling good naturedly.

"Are you sure roses were a good idea? I know they smell better than the carnations, but does look a little gay, bringing them for a man."

"We've already been mistaken for a couple three times tonight, Cal... I'm sure you can cope with it."

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	5. Chapter 5

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Harry stood with his back to the wall, hand on the vending machine beside him. He had honestly never felt so tired. There were a couple of memories that came close. There was one time in Derry, where he had been kept awake for two days by his captors, electricity run through his body, knives run under his skin. But that had been more terrifying and painful than tiring. There were a few long days on the Grid to pick through, too, but he had almost always managed to get a few hours of kip between the meetings and surges of activity. The closest he had come to this then, he thought, was that time in Baghdad. With Ruth. The constant strain, the constant added tension of them in the air, the long-drawn out waiting game they had played, before finally getting their hands on the Uranium. As he crawled onto the plane to come home, he had felt not so very dissimilar to how he felt, now. Satisfaction that what he had gone there to do was done, but completely and utterly exhausted.

Closing his eyes, he allowed his face to contort in a very wide yawn. He was far too old for this. Any of this. But still...

Next to him, the vending machine buzzed loudly. It was one of those types with coffee. Reaching out, Harry slipped a few coins in to the slot and punched in a number he had punched in several times already over the last few days, in an attempt to keep himself awake and alert. The man snoozing on a chair nearby stirred and almost woke as the coffee started to pour down into the small polystyrene cup. Harry watched him for a moment, then idly raised his eyes, scanning around the corridor in an effort to find something to focus on – something to keep him awake. He found more than he was bargaining for.

A figure down at the end of the hall caught his eye immediately. One he recognised. One he knew.

Malcolm.

Harry froze, watching.

Malcolm froze, watching him back.

The two men stood, regarding each other, for a few long minutes. Then, Malcolm seemed to gather himself and started walking towards him. Harry just stood, rooted to the spot and utterly thrown. How on earth had he found him here? There was no link – no link between his life now and the one he had previously led. This was impossible. As Malcolm drew level with him, he opened his mouth to say something to that effect, but Malcolm beat him to it.

"Medical records," he explained, with a sad little smile.

"I used a different name," Harry blustered, slowly.

"Yes, but there are only so many people in the country who have been shot, stabbed, burnt, poisoned, battered, broken, and bruised the same number of times as you have and have exactly the same allergies, approximate age and blood group."

"I left some of the details out."

Malcolm threw him an apologetic look. "Not any medically important details. I disregarded the rest, assuming you would do also."

"And the years I added on?"

"I gave a five year window, to try and catch you out."

There was a short pause.

"You're bloody brilliant, Malcolm. You know that, don't you?"

His old friend let out a small laugh. "I have my moments."

There was a moment of silence between them, then Malcolm pushed forwards again.

"Harry, what happened? Why did you leave?" He faltered, then forced himself to continue. "Is there something wrong?" he asked, face growing tense in that way he had. "Medically?"

Harry let out a very long sigh.

"Do any of the others know you're here?" he asked, eyes searching his oldest colleague's for any sign of a lie.

Malcolm nodded.

Great. Harry ran his hand over his face. He had known Erin Watts would not let his wandering off into the sunset go unquestioned. Still, he had thought his trail was impossible to follow. He had done everything right. He had worked six months to make sure that his new life was watertight. And it needed to be watertight. He had so much to protect...

"Are you ill, Harry?" Malcolm asked, quietly.

Harry glanced back over at him, having completely forgotten where they were and what Malcolm would have assumed, had he tracked him here. They were in a hospital. Harry had left the Service suddenly and with no explanation. Naturally, they would have assumed he had either snapped or something was wrong with him; both highly likely, he supposed, with the last year having played out like it had.

"No," he answered, honestly. "I'm not ill."

Malcolm frowned.

"Then why are you in a-?"

"-It's something else," Harry shook his head. "Listen, Malcolm, are Erin and the rest of them here now?"

The ex-technical officer nodded. "I thought they deserved to know you hadn't gone and offed yourself."

Harry tried not to look too offended. He supposed his withdrawn depression, over the last few months, could well have been interpreted as suicidal. He hadn't meant to make them worry about him of course. In fact, he had tried very hard to stay strong on front of the team. Still, he missed Ruth so dreadfully and being in that place was a constant reminder. It was like a constant feed of memory triggers. Her at her desk, pen in her mouth. Her on front of his desk, eyes shining as she fought for her latest cause. Ruth. Everything about that place spoke of her but she wasn't there. It had been so awful.

He had missed her with every fibre of his being – in every way it was possible to miss a person. He missed her as an employee. He missed her as a friend. He missed her as the lover he had only just tasted. He missed their conversations, their little brushes against each other on the Grid, her dazzling intelligence, her brilliant eyes. He missed the soft pressure of her body against his and the feeling of completion and wholeness he felt with her flush against him. He had relived that night more times than he cared to recount, over the past few months. The tenderness with which she touched him. The soft words of comfort she pressed against his skin. Beautiful, beautiful Ruth. His beautiful, beautiful Ruth.

Tearing his mind back to the present, he swallowed and asked Malcolm if they had informed anyone on the Grid.

Malcolm shook his head.

"It's all off the books. We never entered even an enquiry through the system. We all took clearing routes before even heading here, tonight. We took every precaution."

Harry felt just a little relieved.

"Thank you," he told his old friend quietly.

They stood for a long moment, then Malcolm sighed.

"I don't care if you say you're not ill, you look bloody awful."

Harry gave a wry smile. "Just a little tired."

"A little tired?" Malcolm's eyes swept over him. "Harry you look like you've been up for a week straight."

"It's been two days since I got any sleep," he admitted, honestly.

"Would you like to tell me what's going on?"

Would he? Harry wasn't sure. Half of him was leaping with pleasure that Malcolm was here – that his people were here. Half of him wanted to tell them everything, wanted to keep no more secrets, wanted to show the world exactly what he was feeling inside over what was going on in his life. But the other half of him, the half which had kept him alive so many times in the past, was squirming away in a mixture of discomfort and worry. He had spent so much time making sure that nobody would find him. He had spent six months ensuring this new life he had entered was not connected to his previous one. He had much to protect, now. So very much. He couldn't have the two blending together again. He just couldn't.

"Malcolm..." he started, watching his old friend, feeling torn.

"Why did you leave?"

"I had to."

"So close to the events happening this summer? You had been crowing all of last year about how dangerous it was all going to be and then you leave, before you have the chance to protect us from it?"

Harry gave him a pained expression.

"I left. It's done, Malcolm. I knew Erin would handle just fine without me."

"But to leave your job, your life..."

"I had good reason."

Malcolm eyed him, then a strange expression flitted across his face.

Harry knew that look well. It was an idea taking hold.

"Reason you considered more important than your job?" his ex-technical officer asked, slowly.

Harry felt a rush of panic. Damn Malcolm and his brilliant mind. There was only one thing he had ever put above his job and his country. He felt the irrational urge to turn and walk away. Running away would not help. Malcolm was on the right trail, now. All it took was a quick look into medical records again, cross-referencing a different set of medical notes, and he would find what he was looking for.

"Your daughter and son don't know why you left, so it's not family," Malcolm continued, slowly.

"Malcolm, can we just drop it-?"

"-So what else do you value above your reputation and job?"

A pause.

He knew. There was certainty in his eyes.

Harry swallowed hard.

"You have to promise..." Harry began, nipping nervously at his lower lip. "Malcolm, you have to swear..."

Realisation leapt up in the older man's eyes. Realisation followed by righteous anger.

"She's here, isn't she?"

Harry blinked anxiously. "Malcolm..."

"She's alive and you didn't tell any of us?"

"We thought -,"

"You cold-hearted bastard," Malcolm hissed, low in his throat. "You stood beside me at her funeral!"

He was furious. His eyes were over bright, his forehead creased in a dozen ways, anger and tension and sadness all in one. Harry had only ever seen him like this once before – that day that Colin had been taken from them. Today, he had realised the loss of another close friend had been a lie. Or, rather, a loss even more potent because it had been caused by someone close to him. This was betrayal, and Harry knew what it tasted like, so he gave his oldest colleague a moment before speaking again.

Eventually, however, he could take the accusing stare no longer.

"Malcolm, let me explain," he forced out, feeling simultaneously guilty and relieved, to finally be able to share this with someone.

For so many months, he had gone through his paces, missing her at work – the enforced separation killing him inside, just like the lies he was forced to tell the others. He had kept it a secret for so long, his heart bursting out of his chest with desire to tell people, knowing that he couldn't. For them to survive this, to be safe, they had to follow the plan they had formed in the hospital – the plan they had formed together while she had lain, tentatively clinging to life, after her coma. Holding the results of blood tests and lists of things she would have to be careful of, after such major surgery, they had made a very difficult decision. They had allowed the others to believe that she was dead to protect something greater than their individual selves.

"We needed to be safe," he stumbled to explain to Malcolm, now. "We needed a new start and the only way to truly get out of this life is six feet under."

"You allowed your friends to believe that Ruth was dead and you had gone off to kill yourself!"

The guilt ripped a little deeper. Harry looked down at his feet.

"Malcolm..."

"What on earth did you think was deserving of that sort of safety, Harry? What on earth was worse than what you two had already faced together?"

Harry took a deep breath.

Here went nothing.

"Come with me and I'll show you."

.


	6. Chapter 6

.

Ruth woke wrapped up in hospital sheets, with the lamp still glowing beside her bed. The steady beep of the machines filled the air like a quiet droning. No respirator though, she told herself, as she began to drift back into consciousness. Not like the last time she woke up in a hospital bed, when there had been a tube down her throat and her legs and arms were so weak she could hardly move.

A quick stretching of her body told her that there were no tubes at all in her body, save an IV in her left hand and a monitor clip on her fingertip. She was a little uncomfortable, but no more than she would expect to be. The painkillers she had allowed them to give her that morning, to ease her slumbers, were working wonders on the aching in her abdomen. Taking a deep breath, she gently lifted her body weight up on her arms, sitting up and moving her hospital gown to one side to tentatively explore her scars.

The first was a sickle shape, beneath her ribs. It would be the lesser of the two, once they were both fully healed. Yet, its story was the longer and more arduous one. MI5, Thames House, Harry, all of the pain and suffering, the ones they lost and the ones they could not save; the job and the pressures it brought with it. This scar meant everything to Ruth. It was what made her who and what she was, today. It spoke of sacrifice and the choices she had made, and one choice in particular – to step in front of Harry, that day, by the estuary. Three quarters of a year had passed, since her confrontation with Sasha Gavrik on the windswept fens, but the wound in her side had never hurt in that time quite as much as it did today. Inhaling brought with it a sharp itching pain, in her lungs. Too much sustained hard breathing, for too long, she reasoned. But it can't be all that serious. She was still breathing fine.

Moving her fingers lower, she sought out the edge of the second wound. A new one, freshly stitched and bandaged to protect it. It was far more painful than the first scar, and far larger, but the painkillers cut through most of it. And it couldn't be that bad, Ruth reasoned. The nurses have her hooked up to the monitor. Any change in her breathing from the first scar, or bleeding from the second, and they would be in here like a shot. They have been very good to her. Ruth reminded herself to get something for the ward, at the end of all of this. Just a little token of some kind; flowers, chocolates, something like that.

Leaning back against her pillows, Ruth gently rearranged herself until the pain in her abdomen and her chest were both relieved. One old wound, one new, she thought; two scars she will bear for the rest of her life, but willingly so. Each told a story and she was infinitely proud of both.

Across the room, a noise at the door caused her to start from her reverie. Harry, she thought, her body warming and muscles relaxing from the tension she had not even noticed them holding. Since he had come back to her, nearly three months ago now, they had spent most of their time in each other's company. It felt strange to be separated, now.

She gave him a smile as he slipped inside and pulled the door closed behind him.

"Hello," he greeted her softly.

"Hello." She yawned, watching him through sleep-lidded eyes as he padded over to her side.

He looked incredibly tired. She had tried to convince him to hours ago, in the hope that he might get some sleep, but his reply (as 'Harry' as ever) was that he felt as if he had been asleep for years. He wasn't going to miss any single part of them, now that he had been given a second chance. Best intentions aside, however, Ruth was going to force him to go home when she next saw him. She appreciated his need to be involved in every aspect of this, but Harry was – underneath it all – painfully human. He was going to need to sleep sometime and she would prefer he do it in a bed, or a chair, somewhere safe, rather than while he was driving them home at the end of all of this. It would be a rather anti-climactic way to end their story.

Reaching down, she slipped her fingers around his as he pulled her blankets up, murmuring something about her getting cold.

"I'm fine," she assured him. She had banned him from asking if she was okay, after his over-enthusiasm earlier, but she knew he still needed to hear it every now and then. "I feel much better than this morning," she told him, wrapping a thumb under his so that their fingerpads were pressed together.

His warm hands were one of her very favourite parts of him, Ruth mused, as he gave a little smile at her words. She was fascinated by how gently someone like him could touch. How gently someone like him could hold. She didn't deserve someone as wonderful him, she thought, as he moved to sit on the bed beside her. He really was wonderful. He had stayed by her side for every bit of this that he could; he had cradled her in his arms as her heart stopped; he had crouched in the back of the medical helicopter, as she was resuscitated and lost and resuscitated again; he had sat beside her afterwards, as she had lain in a coma, urged by the hospital staff and his colleagues to turn off the ventilator that was keeping her alive.

It had been truly awful, he told her later. He had sat there, wrecked by the thought that she had sacrificed everything for him – that she had placed her life's worth below his. It had been a horrible thing task, then, to decide when hers was ending, by turning of the machine. All of his internal thrashing had been rendered moot, however, when – early on the Sunday morning, nearly a week after Sasha had slipped that glass into her side – she had started to choke back on the tube down her throat and come back from her coma, all by herself.

Breathe in, breathe out. Choke. Pain. Ruth could still remember the moment. It was only half-consciousness, really. She was not fully able to form thoughts, let alone movement, and her body was stuck in the strange sensation of constant falling. She felt like she was drifting, made of feather down, into endless blackness. Shocked and fascinated by her show of awareness, the doctors had hastened to run more tests. They had changed her medications, deciding that she was having a negative reaction to her painkillers which was preventing her from regaining consciousness. They changed her transfusion and IV regimen and, much to everyone's surprise and after a minor scare involving a blood clot, she began to come around.

She woke properly at six o' clock in the morning – in more pain than she had felt in her entire life. Her head was pounding. She still felt sick and battered and bruised. But at least she knew who she was, where she was, and that she was alive. Slowly, in her half-blurred world, Ruth had reached out and found the closest thing she could touch, to reassure herself that this was, in fact, reality. Her fingers had closed around Harry's hand.

He had been there for seven days, she would later learn. At the time, however, she had no concept of how many hours had passed, since she had slipped unconscious in his arms and her heart had stopped beating. She did not know that he had refused to move – that he had thrown all his weight around until the doctors backed off and let him sleep on the ward, in the chair beside her. All she knew was that she had never been so happy to see someone in her entire life. And Harry had never looked so happy to see her. As she whispered his name, her voice rough and almost unintelligible from days spent on a respirator and IV fluids, he had broken down and wept. He had cried proper tears, for the first time Ruth had known him. As the blue of her eyes had finally focussed on the dark hazel of his, he had lifted her palm to his face and pressed kisses into it. As her fingers had tightened weakly against him, he had whispered how incredibly scared he had been.

"I thought they'd taken you, too," he voice torn and harsh.

It was probably the singularly most poignant moment of her life. The complete and heartfelt joy in his face, the utter relief in his voice as he shook against her. Ruth had never felt so needed. Though her body was in agony, her mind felt at peace. Stroking her fingertips across his cheek, because she was not strong enough to talk, she had tried to convey all of her love for him in that moment and, however impossible it sounded, she thought Harry might have understood, because he held onto her a little tighter and pressed more kisses into her skin.

They had been through rough patches, since then. They had argued long and hard about what to do, now that they had been given the opportunity for a second chance – what to do with the results of the blood and breath output tests, which told her that her life was never going to be the same again. After a long and agonising hour, with tears streaming down her cheeks, Ruth had agreed to Harry's plan. She had made the almost impossible choice, deciding to follow an immediately painful route, in pursuit of future happiness. To ensure their freedom and protection, she agreed to leave everything of her previous life behind her. Her home, her job, the team. And her life. One nod to Harry was all it took to set the plan in motion.

To the world, she became a dead woman. Her name was writ on a black wall, in Thames House, alongside others who had fallen in the line of duty. Ruth had felt overwhelmingly guilty for it, at first, for allowing the team to believe that she had perished at the hand of the man they had been responsible for watching. As time went by, however, she realised that her death would be just as the others' deaths were to her, something to learn from, something to hold onto. They were spooks. They were destined to lose. And she could not sacrifice her own future to stave off the inevitable for a while longer. Better they lose her and she be free, as Harry had told her gently, sitting beside her hospital bed. They needed to protect what they had. This was the only way to ensure that.

Reaching up, Ruth let go of Harry's hand to stroke flat a few strands of hair flat, against the side of his head.

He was a good man. Whatever he had done, whatever horrors he had seen and secrets that he had kept, he had always been a good man. And he was her man, besides it all. Neither of them were perfect. She had stopped fighting for them to be. It was three months that they had been together, now. Three months since Harry had come back from his charade in London – with their lives fully prepared. It had been an awful six months for her, being parted with him as she had healed, as her body changed. She had missed him dreadfully, but she imagined his situation must have been even worse. It must have been hellish, for example, to inform the others that she had slipped away from her coma without ever fully regaining consciousness. She knew how much it would have torn Harry apart, to accept their condolences and attend her memorial service, knowing that she was still alive.

It had been necessary pain, however, on both their parts. It had taken her death and every one of those six months to move money around and create false identities, to ensure that there were no paper trails, or bank account details that could be followed. Six months to set them free, Ruth mused, with a little sigh. It was not a big price to pay, at the end of it all. Now, they were safe. Now, they had a home.

It was beautiful, their place; a little house on the east coast of the country, not so very far from where she had wanted to live, but a little more spacious than her original cottage. It didn't have a pretty green door, but it did have a garden and a long sloping lawn that disappeared off into wilder parts of the countryside around it. The grounds had a few scattered trees and little snickety walks, heading off along the seafront, and places you could lose yourself for hours at a time. At night, if you sat on the small balcony attached to the main bedroom, you could look out over the North sea and watch the lights of boats passing by. The night was dark, out there, with not even a shadow of the orange sky of London. It was beautiful, her sanctuary.

Her and Harry's sanctuary.

"I can't wait to get back to the house," she told her companion softly, as he traced his fingers up and down her arm. They were still very good at the little touches, she thought, the little brushing touches that couples tended to lose as they spent longer together. "It'll be nice to be in my own bed again."

"I know." He gave a sigh. "I'm afraid they want you to stay in for four days, though."

"It seems a long time."

"The incision needs time, to heal."

"I feel much better already."

"You're staying in for four days," he told her, firmly, with just a hint of the command he had used with her on the Grid.

Ruth gave a little smile, looking down.

"Yes, boss..."

His fingers gave hers a reproachful squeeze.

They sat for a moment longer. Everything was quiet. Everything was still and calm and made complete sense. There was no need for any analysis. Ruth was just about to suggest that Harry go home and get some rest when he cleared his throat with clear intention to speak first. Ruth saw the worry in his eyes and a flicker of panic rose up within her.

"Harry, what's wrong?" she asked, tightening her grip on his hands. "Is it-,"

"No, he's fine," Harry cut in, giving her a nervous half-smile. "It's something else." He glanced over to the door. "Ruth... there are a couple of visitors for you. I know you weren't expecting this – neither was I – but they're here now. Of course, if you don't want to see them, then that's perfectly fine. I can send them away," he told her, "but-,"

"-Harry, hang on a minute," Ruth interrupted, her eyebrows dipped into a frown. "What visitors?" she asked. "I mean, who?" They didn't know anyone in their new life well enough to warrant a visit here. So that had to mean...

"Malcolm, Erin, Dimitri and Calum," Harry admitted, sounding slightly uneasy, obviously not entirely sure of what her reaction would be to his reveal that the separation of their two lives had not worked quite as well as she had expected.

Strangely enough, however, it was not panic that filtered through first. It was joy.

Malcolm, Erin, Dimitri, Calum; she had missed them all dreadfully. Not seeing them every day was a shock to the system, during her first few weeks in hospital. In addition to the loss, of course, she had also been consumed with guilt, for what they had gone through; Erin and Dimitri in particular, who had been supposed to be watching Sasha when he escaped from the bunker. She felt terrible for lying to them – even if it was only a lie by omission. She had lost colleagues, before. She knew how it hurt. If the situation had not lain as it did, then, she would never have kept her status a secret from them. But the situation did lie as it did. At least it had done.

Ruth gave a little uncomfortable shift in her bed, feeling panic finally seep in, to join the joy. She was happy to see them, but the team knowing she was alive meant that it could have been entered any of into the system. If they had done any enquiries, or used MI5 resources to find and see them, tonight, then anyone who access to the system could see that – and that was a link to their current whereabouts. They had spent so long erasing any connection to their new life from their old one. Was it really all in vain, now?

"Harry?" She asked, feeling her cheeks drain slightly of colour. "How did they find us? What went wrong? Are we going to have to move or go back?"

"It's all off the Grid," Harry assured her, softly rubbing her fingers between his own. "Malcolm was the one who found us. Apparently he's been working on it, for Erin, ever since I left. Nobody outside the old team knows – and Malcolm only told them because he thought they had the right to know I hadn't '_gone and offed myself'_," he explained, with remorse in his eyes.

Ruth looked down at their joined hands. She knew that Harry held his own guilt for what they had done. She knew that it ate away at him inside. But it had been necessary. Still, she reasoned silently, if the team already knew she was alive and knew she was here, there was really no harm in seeing them, was there? And it wasn't as if this hospital visit could be traced to their actual lives together. They lived almost two hundred miles away from this place. The distance had been a necessary precaution against exactly what had happened; their medical records leading to their discovery.

"I'll tell them to go," Harry said softly, after she had not sat thinking, not speaking, for nearly half a minute. "It's probably for the best."

As he stood, steadying himself to rise, however, Ruth tugged gently on his hand, shaking her head.

"No," she gave him a little smile. "Bring them in. It's okay."

"Ruth..." he scanned her face, still looking a little unsure. "You don't have to see anyone. If this is going to be too difficult, then we can-."

"I want to see them," she admitted, honestly.

Harry nodded, looking, if she was not mistaken, a bit relieved.

"Okay then."

.


	7. Chapter 7

.

Harry appeared in the corridor and stood on front of Malcolm and the assembled spooks.

"She'd like to see you all," he told them, with a slightly cautious look in his eyes – a protective look, those who knew him could see. "She's only a day or so post surgery so try and be brief and," he added, directing this last comment to Calum, "keep the noise to a minimum. Visiting hour ends in five minutes. I'm going to go and plead your case to stay a little longer, with the staff nurse." He glanced off down the hall. "So, just try not to give us a bad name in the meantime, will you?"

"Of course," Calum gave a little smirk, "...Mr Smith."

Harry shot him a slightly warning look.

"Keep it quiet."

"All right, all right..."

Harry watched them as they all squirmed past, eager to get into the room beyond. Erin and Dimitri made it through first, followed by Calum, who was bouncing on his toes to get the first look of the woman inside the hospital room. Malcolm took up the rear, pausing before he entered and seeming to steel himself, slightly.

Of all the visitors, he was the one who had been struck most deeply by Ruth's death. To find her alive filled him with untold pleasure but also with a strange feeling of betrayal. He understood what she had done and why she had done it – Harry had made it all very clear – but it still wasn't an easy thing for him to find out. His friends, the two people he had considered himself closest to in the world as it was, had lied to him. As the ex-technical officer pushed through the door after the rest of them, however, all of his animosity visibly drained away.

Ruth was lying on the bed, looking tired and tender, but delightfully alive. Dimitri was the first over to her side, ducking down to wrap his arms around her shoulders, grinning like a madman. Calum got in there second, pressing a kiss against her head as he moved to take Dimitri's place in the hug. Erin hung a little further back but she was beaming almost as widely as the ex-analyst in the bed. All of them chattered away but fell silent when Ruth's head turned and her eyes fixed on Malcolm's.

For a moment, nobody said anything, then Dimitri and Calum shuffled back, allowing the older spook to come through. Perhaps they realised that this was all going to be awkward enough, without them leaning in on it.

Drawing up to her side, Malcolm cleared his throat and stood with his hands in his pockets.

"Hello."

"Hello." They regarded each other for a very long minute then Ruth, with a tiny shuddering breath, exhaled, "Oh, Malcolm..." Leaning forwards slightly, she winced at the apparent pain in her side, but faced it in order to meet their eyes. "Malcolm, all of you..." she looked around, "I'm so, so sorry. I never meant for any of this to happen the way it did. It was just the only way we could be sure nobody followed us. It had to be complete," she told them, eyes glistening wetly. "They would be reading your reactions as much as Harry's and we couldn't risk it."

They all watched her steadily for a minute, with variations of the same look upon their faces. Very slight reproach, but mostly just discomfort. Nobody really wanted an apology. Everybody was just very glad to see her alive. True to his character, Calum was the first to speak and voice such an opinion.

"Ruth, that's not important, now," he sighed, giving a little shake of his head.

"Yes," Dimitri piped up, giving her a little shrug as he shoved his hands into his pockets. "We understand why you did it."

"-I know it's not a valid excuse," she began, but Erin – the only one there really qualified to judge on the subject at hand – stepped forwards to interrupt her.

"Of course it's a valid excuse," the Section Head told her, moving forwards to stand beside Malcolm at the bedside. "Ruth, you of all people know the danger our lives put us in. You can't take that risk anymore. We understand that."

"I hate that I had to hurt all of you," she whispered.

She continued to look devastated until Malcolm stepped up to the plate.

"Ruth," he started slowly, and everybody shifted a little awkwardly. Their own dismissals of her apology didn't count the same way Malcolm's counted. His was weighted with years of knowing her. His was weighted with years of knowing Harry, too. He had been the worst deceived, here. The words he spoke next, then, caused everyone to give a soft collective sigh of relief. "Let's not dwell on it, shall we? You're here now, when we thought we'd lost you. That is something that we do not see nearly enough of, in our lives." He looked at the others, who nodded and murmured their agreement. "Let us forgive each another," he smiled, cautiously, turning back to Ruth. "Only then will we live in peace."

Ruth gave a little half-laugh.

"Quoting Tolstoy... Goodness, Malcolm. I won't ask how retirement is suiting you then?"

The assembled spooks gave soft noises of amusement.

Malcolm's eyes twinkled, slightly.

"So, how are you all?" Ruth asked, after a long minute, looking back around at the others.

Dimitri and Erin glanced at each other. "Oh you know," smiled the latter, looking back to Ruth. "Getting by."

"Work is mad," Dimitri added.

"And our new boss is even more of a slave-driver than the old one," Calum interjected, from the side.

Erin gave him a look which would have withered lesser men.

Ruth gave a soft smile and turned to Malcolm. "And you?"

He nodded.

"I'm doing well. Keeping busy."

Her face fell slightly. "I heard about your mother, Malcolm," she said, clearly remembering it for the first time. "I'm very sorry."

"It was her time," the ex-spook answered, softly, just a little sadly. "I'm just happy that she was at peace, in the end."

They all stood and looked at each other for a moment, Ruth twisting the very edge of her blankets. As the silence grew, the possibility of a very awkward moment hung in the air. It was sharply interrupted, however, by sudden footsteps and voices outside the door.

Recognising one of them as Harry's, the assembled spooks and Malcolm turned and looked. As they watched, the door handle turned and a nurse's head popped in, Harry visible just outside, at her shoulder. Giving them a smile, the nurse informed them that they were all going to be allowed to stay a little longer – on the condition that they were all extra quiet and they left by nine, in time for lights out – but only because Ruth's husband had a silver tongue.

As Ruth thanked her softly, the others all marvelled internally at the strangeness of the situation. Ruth was alive. Harry was her husband. Here they were in a hospital maternity ward. As Harry passed into the room beside the nurse, however, the strangeness only intensified. Muttering a small thanks to the woman beside him, he gave the rest of them a slightly sheepish look, perhaps regarding the silver-tongued comment. None of them met it, however. Every single spook, including Ruth, was far more focussed on the bundle he carried against his shoulder. A tiny swaddled bundle.

"He was awake," he explained, meeting their eyes with what only Ruth and possibly Malcolm, who knew him better, could read as nervousness. "I thought I'd bring him through and distract you all from how angry you are at me, right now."

The team watched, seemingly enraptured, for a moment longer. Then Erin stepped forwards and walked over.

"You're an idiot," she told Harry quietly, reaching out to gently pull the blanket away from the newborn infant's face. "We're not angry at you," she explained, as a smile began to draw back her face, body reacting to the tiny human being Harry shifted to allow her a better look at. "We're angry at the situation – that it has to be like this – but we do understand." Lowering her hand from the baby's face, she looked up at Harry again. They were the same height, give or take an inch or two. Their gazes met almost level. "He's beautiful, Harry. Can I hold him?"

With a flicker of reluctance, Harry nodded and carefully handed the child over.

"I'd forgotten how small they are when they're new," Erin murmured, as she very competently accepted her charge. Harry's hands looked incredibly large as he handed the child over. Their palm and fingers cradled the newborn's head and half of its small, swaddled body. "Did he reach his due date?"

"Almost two weeks early," Ruth answered gently, from the bed. She looked pleased, tired and satisfied all in one. And eager to have her son back at her side. "They had to do a caesarean because the doctor was worried I wouldn't cope with full-on labour, because of my lung. He was a little blue when they pulled him out but he's been healthy, ever since. Six pounds, three ounces, and eating like a champ."

"He's gorgeous..."

"I think so," the ex-analyst blushed slightly, "but I suppose I'm biased."

Erin shot her a smile as she adjusted the baby against her chest, causing Harry to shift anxiously at her side.

"Relax, Harry," she told him, softly. "I've got him..."

With one last sheepish look, he gave a tiny nod and stepped back.

Protective father. It was odd seeing him like this, thought the assembled spooks, but not all that dissimilar to the Harry they knew from work. The eyes were a little softer but the strong, defensive look was still in place. Harry, shield against all evil in the world. Harry, stop-gate for the terror. There wasn't a safer child in the whole of Britain, thought all of the people in the room, watching him watch his son. He would kill, die, do anything to protect the child in Erin's arms. He had lied to those closest to him for almost six months, to protect him. And, after seeing the child for themselves, instinct rather prevented them from feeling resentment for the choice. It was a tiny, tiny human. Harry and Ruth's tiny, tiny human.

Dimitri was the first of the three male spooks to inch over to where Erin was standing, the Section Head moving over to meet him halfway. A few feet from Ruth's bedside, he leaned over Erin, reaching out to touch a tiny hand as it curled around the edge of the blue hospital blanket.

"He really is beautiful, Ruth," he murmured, softly.

"Lovely," Erin agreed.

"Thank you."

"What's his name?" Calum asked, moving to join the two.

"James," Ruth and Harry spoke, simultaneously. Glancing at each other, Harry moved over to stand next to the bed, still watching Erin holding his son like a hawk. "It was both of our fathers' names," Ruth explained with a tiny smile, turning her eyes back to Calum. "It seemed appropriate."

"Can I have a hold next?" Calum asked, lifting his eyebrows hopefully.

Harry looked slightly nervous again, but Ruth just smiled and nodded.

Reluctantly, Erin handed the baby over, guiding Calum's hands to the correct place, ignoring his grumbling that he was more than capable. Brushing a few strands of hair back, once he was settled, she backed up and gave a little smile as the baby gurgled softly against Calum's arm. Little tiny noises from a little tiny human.

"Hello Jamie," Calum crooned back. "You're lovely, aren't you? You look quite a lot like your daddy but you've got your mummy's eyes, which is probably a good thing," he added, glancing up at Harry a little playfully. "He can look pretty scary when he wants to."

Harry narrowed his eyes infinitesimally.

Ruth yawned again, turning her cheek against the hospital pillow. "Bring him closer, Calum."

"Mmm." The Section Chief wandered over, bouncing the baby gently in his arms. The blankets slipped slightly away revealing pale pink arms and palms. Awake, now, the baby stared blearily up at him, opening and closing his fists very slowly. "He's so small. I mean, I know they're meant to be small, but its crazy. Look at his tiny fingers!"

Ruth smiled, looking up at her son as Calum came to stand near her bedside.

The baby gave a tiny noise of protest, clearly not appreciating the disturbance from his normal routine of sleeping and eating.

"Sorry mate," Calum murmured, shifting him to let his head rest more comfortably.

The baby calmed.

Everyone moved a little nearer to watch, fascination in their eyes, instinct drawing them in. Humans were programmed to feel protective towards something small and vulnerable and that instinct was even more deeply ingrained when the child came from family. And the team were family, in their own strange way. This was one of them. The newest one of them.

"Who'd have thought, eh?" Calum smiled. "...baby Jamie."

"James," Harry corrected, softly.

"Jamie's fine," Ruth soothed, with her eyes half-closed. "He's going to end up as Jamie eventually..."

"I made it to two weeks before Henry became Harry," Harry insisted, softly. "I am determined to give him a fighting chance of not having a 'cute' name."

Calum quirked an eyebrow at his choice of 'cute' but said nothing, bouncing the baby slightly as Erin and Dimitri crowded closer around him, touching palms and feet, exploring the tiny life their friends had made between them. He was more than they had ever expected to find, when they had left for the hospital early that afternoon. They had expected to find Harry, hurt and broken. What they had found was Harry fitting into something that was a whole; Harry with a family, Harry with Ruth and a family. The complete absurdity of the situation continued to hit them, over and over and over again. Ruth alive. Harry with Ruth. Married. With a baby. James. Jamie.

Malcolm stood to the side of them, looking a little detached from the rest. This whole situation was a thousand times stranger, for him. Having known them longer – having known them from the beginning, before the tension and the angst pushed them apart and made them cautious – Malcolm could see both the ways they had changed and the ways that they had not. It was the little details. How they were both more comfortable around each other, for example, how they were simultaneously more aware but a little less uneasy about their physical proximity. Still warm in the eyes, though. Still with the long, meaningful glances and finishing each other's sentences.

Malcolm knew them both inside out. And that was why, even thought it still hurt a little, it meant that he could understand what they had done.

As Harry met his eyes across the room, however, an uneasy weight still hung in the air between them.

Ruth, watching quietly, seemed to sense something was afoot. Reaching out, she beckoned for Calum to bring her son closer. Suddenly looking just a little nervous, she reached out and let him hand the baby down to her, handling him with the awkwardness that only a new time mother could have. As she clumsily shifted him, to avoid placing pressure on the caesarean scar across her belly, Harry moved to reach down to rearrange the infant's head.

"I can do it," she murmured, softly reproachful.

"I know you can." He untangled their son's arm from his blankets and the baby stopped squirming. "There you go."

Ruth took a moment, steadying her charge in her arms, then motioned for her oldest to come a little closer.

Malcolm eyed her for a moment then stepped up to the bed.

"Do you want to hold him?" Ruth asked, a little hopefully.

"No," he shook his head slightly.

"Oh, right." Ruth looked down, pulling her son a little closer, suddenly a little uncomfortable.

"I've never been very good with babies," Malcolm explained. "I tend to hold them wrong and they cry." Reaching down, however, he slipped the tip of a finger into the palm of the newborn's tiny hand and smiled slightly as the baby grasped it. "Is James his full name?"

"James Henry Smith."

"Smith..." Malcolm raised his eyes to Harry's and his old friend read the question in them.

"It's just a name," Harry spoke softly, sliding one hand over the back of Ruth's neck as she held his son below him. His eyes were a little nostalgic, but not so very sad. For the first time in a very long time, he looked at peace with himself and the world around him. "Smith. Pearce. Evershed. We are who we make ourselves."

Malcolm nodded.

The other spooks watched.

A very long few months passed, then the baby yawned and Malcolm looked back up at its parents.

"I am so glad to see you both," he admitted, softly, the weight of emotion heavy in his voice.

Ruth nodded, looking slightly tearful.

Harry nodded, looking very grateful.

"Likewise," he said, with a smile and just a hint of dryness in his voice.

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	8. Chapter 8

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As the clock ticked closer to nine o' clock on the wall, the awkwardness of the team's initial reuniting faded away and conversation sprung up between them again. Pulling chairs in from the waiting room, they arranged themselves around Ruth's bed and cooed over the dozing baby a little longer. Every one of them knew that, once their visiting hour was over, they would never be all together again. One late night trip, for the three of them, would go unnoticed by the powers that be. But they would be missed if they went to visit again and, while they were gone, something happened – and there was always one night of the week when something happened and Erin was required for an emergency on the Grid. Ruth and Harry were only here for a few more days, then they would be returning to their home, many miles away. Their home. With their son.

As the time to leave finally arrived, Erin, Dimitri and Calum gathered themselves and gave a slightly tearful goodbye. Hugs for their ex-colleague. Handshakes for their ex-boss. Erin left through the door first, giving her cheek a little wipe against a few errant tears, and Harry caught Dimitri's eye, giving him a meaningful little nod after her. The younger man looked embarrassed, but nodded and followed his new boss out. As they passed through the door together, the rest of the assembled spooks saw him slip a hand around her back and rubbed it gently. Erin leaned into him.

"Thanks for that," Calum told Harry, sarcastically, as they disappeared from sight. "I have to share the car back with them, you know."

"You are very welcome," Harry replied, then looked a little awkward as Calum walked over gave him a half-embrace and a slap on the back. "Good to see you, Calum. Take care of yourself."

"Likewise. Take care of that lady of yours." Hovering in the room for just a moment longer, he met Ruth's eye and the pair of them shared a smile. "All the best to the both of you. You do deserve a new start, you know." He gestured around. "...you deserve all of this." A moment passed then, giving an awkward little nod, Calum left too.

It was just Harry, Ruth and Malcolm left.

"Well, I suppose I should be making moves also," the older man sighed, after the seconds had stretched on. "Don't want to inspire ire in the nursing staff and it would be nice to get back to London before the early hours of tomorrow morning."

Ruth and Harry nodded, the latter moving back to stand by his wife's bedside, one hand dropping down to rest on his son's head. Protective. Not different, as a person, not perfect, but somehow a little bit more whole.

"Are you still staying near Holland Park?" the ex-Section Head asked Malcolm, watching him slightly wistfully.

This was the last sliver of their old life moving away from them again. This was final separation from their friends and colleagues, and part of him wanted to drag it out for as long as possible. Malcolm meant slightly more to both of them than the rest of the team. Malcolm had been there when they started. Malcolm had seen them grow from their uneasy acquaintanceship to the early warmth of friendship, then on from there. He had known them through every painful, beautiful little detail of their journey.

Across from Harry, the ex-technical officer smiled in response to the question.

"Yes," he answered, with a nod. "It's a nice enough place but I was thinking of moving, actually. City life is starting to feel a little rushed, these days – the house a little too big and empty, since my mother passed away. A lot of the people I socialise with, in the area, have left for the country as well. Retirement and all that."

"Indeed." Harry watched him intently, the flickering of something in his eyes. An idea. A revelation.

"I was thinking of selling up and finding a place a little further away from it all," Malcolm continued. "Somewhere with more space and a slower pace, some greenery around, perhaps even a view of the sea. I've always wanted to move nearer the sea."

A moment passed and Harry glanced down at Ruth, communicating in that strange wordless way they seemed to have. They seemed, from where Malcolm was standing, to be asking each other if something was a good idea. He thought he knew what.

"You know," Harry looked back up, a decision clearly (if silently) reached, between them. "If you're looking for quiet coastal property, I can recommend a few towns in Suffolk which might suit.

Malcolm's expression shifted, a tiny smile appearing around his lips.

Suffolk. Ruth had always liked Suffolk. On the slow days, when they had been working through a backlog of paperwork, they had used to talk about where they would live, if they could chose anywhere. They had discussed where the best place would be, somewhere quiet and peaceful but not so very far from the city and its cultural offerings, and the eastern county had been Ruth's conclusion. It made sense that they lived in Suffolk now, Malcolm thought. It was always going to be Ruth's choice where they made their home, after all. She was the one who needed bricks and mortar. Harry just needed Ruth. She had been the only thing he had needed for years.

"It's a little more open than the south," Harry continued, across the way, "and you get more for your money. Good commute time back down to London, too, in case you're still involved in any projects here."

Malcolm nodded, slowly.

"I'll have to have a look and see if I like the area."

"It's lovely," Ruth assured him, stroking her baby son's fingers between her own. Her eyes were reserved, but just a little bit hopeful. She knew that he knew what they were implying. It would not be explicitly said, of course. Neither Harry nor Ruth would want to infringe on Malcolm's plausible deniability, on the subject of their existence. Ruth knew that he understood, though. She had known him for long enough to be able to read the softness in his eyes. "It's only an hour and a half from Cambridge," she told him, thinking of the University buildings where she lectured Ancient Greek poetry, part time, "and two and a bit from London. You would have civilization within your reach, for your cultural inclinations, but also the openness of the countryside up at the coast. It's beautiful," she told him. "And peaceful."

"And there are really wonderful people living in the area," Harry added with a hint of playfulness, making Ruth smile slightly.

Malcolm looked between them.

"Wouldn't it be a bit of a risk?" he asked, eventually.

The three spooks all looked at each other for a moment longer, then Harry gave a shrug. "The Service seems to have lost interest in where I am. All investigations were closed almost two months ago. And I doubt anyone was keeping tabs, just in case I contacted you to impart property advice, besides."

"And what if they are, just in case?"

"I'm sure it would be nothing you were not able to evade."

"You should definitely consider the move," Ruth agreed, nodding slightly.

'_As long as he was careful'_ were the words that hung in the air, after her sentence. As long as he was careful and covered his tracks, he could join them in their sanctuary. He could buy a house up there, near their small quiet town, and maybe just happen to bump into them in the supermarket one day. He accidentally sit down across from Harry, in the library, or chance upon Ruth, singing in the choir she attended in Cambridge. As long as he was careful – and they knew he could be, otherwise they would not have trusted him with this – he was invited to be a part of their secret life. Coming from two very private people, such as Ruth and Harry, it was an incredible honour.

"I will think on it," he told them, softly. It didn't do to make rash decisions, after all. And he would have to hold out on moving for a few months anyway, so that the team did not suspect his actions, coming so soon after they all discovering the pair. But he would think on it. (Even if his choice was as good as already made). He had a few friends in London, he had a few acquaintances. But Ruth and Harry were more than that and the opportunity to not be alone in this world, knowing what he had seen and done, was too great to pass up. "I'll do some house-hunting in the area."

"Good." Harry told him, looking down at his child, nestled in its mother's arms. "What Calum said, earlier, was right, you know. We've all sacrificed enough, for this job. We deserve a little peace."

"A little redemption," said Ruth.

Harry looked up at his wife and they shared another long look which implied, to Malcolm, that there was secret meaning behind her comment. They looked so perfectly attuned to one another, so perfectly natural now that they had let go of the reserve that had held them back for so long. The ex-technical officer gave a soft smile, to himself. Harry and Ruth. Together. Finally.

In Ruth's arms, their son gave a soft, disgruntled noise. She soothed him, flattening a few strands of fair hair against his pink head.

Reminding himself that it was time to go, Malcolm nodded and buttoned his coat tight around him, preparing to head back out into the world. It was a big world but, suddenly, it did not feel quite as lonely as it had done, these past few months since his mother passed away. For the first time in a long time, there was something of a goal on his horizon. A house in Suffolk. Somewhere quiet and peaceful, to read himself into his old age. Somewhere close to two people he considered as good as family.

"Take care," he told them softly, taking one last sweep of the room and its contents. His two closest friends. Their newborn son. "All of you. I'll see you soon."

They nodded.

He left.

.

As the night drew a little further in, Ruth lay the baby down in the glass cot beside the bed and Harry pulled his chair closer. As he rested his head on his folded arms and his folded arms on top of the mattress, she ran her fingers over the back of his weary head, sliding them through his hair. They talked, murmuring soft words to each other. Talk about their old lives, talk about their new lives and the new life that lay slumbering in the cot beside them. Talk of how lucky they were.

They knew they were lucky. They knew that the chances of them ever having reached this point were a million to one. The fact that they were both even alive was the result of thousands of variables slotting into place at the right time; friends in the right places, which had allowed to Harry to survive the chaos of their work for as long as he did; the cold in the air, that day by the old military bunker, which had allowed Ruth to survive clinical death for almost five minutes. By all the rules of their world, they should never have lasted this long. The culmination of these variables and more were highly unlikely. Yet, here they were. He had survived the bullets and the bombs. She had been resuscitated from a state of hypothermic near-death and come around from a severe coma with full brain function. They were incredibly lucky. And the child that lay beside them was even luckier.

It was a miracle, the doctor had explained, in the hours after Ruth had come around from her coma. It was a miracle that the tiny ball of cells growing inside of her had even survived the state of shock she had slipped into, from the pain and loss of blood. They had been lucky that the child – not even a child, at this point, barely even a growing thing – had been too insignificant to be affected. The embryo had not yet implanted into the wall of her womb. It was living off the energy supplied in the egg and, by the time it did implant, she had been stabilised in the hospital after her surgeries. It was really quite remarkable, he had commented, glowing at the pair of them. Had it been conceived one or two days earlier, it would never have survived. They truly had wonderful timing.

Looking back, Ruth thought their luck – their 'wonderful timing' and its resulting happiness – might just be owed to them, for the years of pain and sacrifice.

It was the way she had thought the world worked, when she was young. She had reasoned that the universe was built on balance; negative and positive forces repelling and attracting, dark and light, chaos and order. She had reasoned that society worked a little like a giant set of scales. Sometimes it shifted slightly to the left, sometimes slightly to the right, but it would always even out back to the centre. That was the way things worked in her books, after all. In the end, good triumphed over evil and the characters who deserved it got their redemption.

After several years in the Service, however, she had discounted that theory as not holding true for real life. She had seen all of the pain and suffering, the lives lost in what appeared to be wasteful abandon. She had become cynical and darkened, by it. She had considered her earlier theories on life and the universe as youthful naiveté and dismissed the conclusions drawn by the authors of her books to be simply romanticisms. What she had never really considered then, of course, was that a book had one very major difference to real life. In a book, the entire story was already written.

Life wasn't like that, she understood, now. Life was a process that you could only view from the inside. You couldn't see the story as a whole – what happened in the end, what balances was righted – because the story was not finished, yet. You could only view things from where you were and that could be anywhere, really. The last page of the novel could be five chapters ahead, or just five letters. The story could go on for thirty years, or everything could end in a second, with in the slicing of a shard of glass, through your skin.

The world could still work like she had thought it worked, she realised, in the illuminating days after she had come around from her coma. There could be balance. She had just not been able to see it, for a while, because she was in the middle of a very dark chapter of her story. And now she had passed through it. Now, the scales had tipped back to the centre, again. The universe had given them a second chance – given back each other back and a miracle all of their own – and, for the first time in her life, Ruth was not going to analyse why it had. She was not going to waste a single minute of her second chance trying to figure out why it was granted to her, she decided. She would no longer allow herself to become preoccupied with where her story was going. She just wanted to live it.

They had found a sweet redemption in each other, after all of the pain and terror that they had witnessed. It was a solid place to start from, a good foundation to build any further chapters of their story. And as for what their story was about...? Well, Ruth thought the answer to that one was simpler than she had ever anticipated.

All they had been through together, all the things they had inflicted upon one another – all the acts of jealousy and rage, of regret and misunderstanding, all the selfishness and kindness and sacrifice – had been motivated by love. And that is what all the greatest stories were about, weren't they? All the truest human stories – whether they be about epic battles fought on desert sands, or quiet thoughts inside a single characters mind – came down to one thing. Simple human love.

She loved Harry. Harry loved her. Just occasionally, the way the universe righted itself gave two people a second chance.

Their story was about love.

For now, that was all Ruth needed to know.

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_FIN_

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End file.
